Daily Archives: October 25, 2007

NEWS, ANALYSIS & EDITOR’S COMMENT: Targeting Iran

Attack Iran and you attack Russia
By Pepe Escobar, Asia Times, October 26, 2007

The apparent internal controversy on how exactly Putin and the Supreme Leader are on the same wavelength belies a serious rift in the higher spheres of the Islamic Republic. The replacement of Larijani, a realist hawk, by Jalili, an unknown quantity with an even more hawkish background, might spell an Ahmadinejad victory. It’s not that simple.

The powerful Ali Akbar Velayati, the diplomatic adviser to the Supreme Leader, said he didn’t like the replacement one bit. Even worse: regarding the appalling record of the Ahmadinejad presidency when it comes to the economy, all-out criticism is now the norm. Another former nuclear negotiator, Hassan Rowhani, told the Etemad-e Melli newspaper, “The effects of the [UN] sanctions are visible. Our situation gets worse day by day.”

Ahmadinejad for the past two months has been placing his former IRGC brothers-in-arms in key posts, like the presidency of the central bank and the Oil, Industry and Interior ministries. Internal repression is rife. On Sunday, hundreds of students protested at the Amir-Kabir University in Tehran, calling for “Death to the dictator”.

The wily, ultimate pragmatist Hashemi Rafsanjani, now leader of the Council of Experts and in practice a much more powerful figure than Ahmadinejad, took no time to publicly reflect that “we can’t bend people’s thoughts with dictatorial regimes”. [complete article]

Editor’s Comment — A possibility that doesn’t seem to fit into Washington’s calculations is that Ahmadinejad may go faster than they expect or would even want. Faced then with a more pragmatic Iranian government which may at the same time be just as unwilling to bow to American demands, Iran could score some major victories in the international arena, leaving the neocon rhinos with nothing more than can do than snort and kick up dust. (Semantic note: It’s time to stop applying the hawk metaphor to the Cheney gang. Hawks have excellent sight, superb flying skills and know how to launch a precision strike with perfect timing. Dick Cheney and Norman Podhoretz are not hawks.)

U.S. imposes new sanctions against Iran
By Robin Wright, Washington Post, October 25, 2007

The Bush administration announced an unprecedented package of unilateral sanctions against Iran today, including the long-awaited designations of its Revolutionary Guard Corps as a proliferator of weapons of mass destruction and of the elite Quds Force as a supporter of terrorism.

The package, announced jointly by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr., marks the first time that the United States has tried to isolate or punish another country’s military. It is the broadest set of punitive measures imposed on Tehran since the 1979 takeover of the U.S. Embassy, and included a call for other countries and firms to stop doing business with three major Iranian banks.

The sanctions recognize that financing for groups like the Revolutionary Guard have become closely entwined with Iran’s economy, making it difficult to disrupt the one without targeting the other. [complete article]

Bomb Iran? U.S. requests bunker-buster bombs
By Jonathan Karl, ABC News, October 24, 2007

Tucked inside the White House’s $196 billion emergency funding request for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is an item that has some people wondering whether the administration is preparing for military action against Iran.

The item: $88 million to modify B-2 stealth bombers so they can carry a newly developed 30,000-pound bomb called the massive ordnance penetrator, or, in military-speak, the MOP.

The MOP is the the military’s largest conventional bomb, a super “bunker-buster” capable of destroying hardened targets deep underground. The one-line explanation for the request said it is in response to “an urgent operational need from theater commanders.” [complete article]

Iran becomes an issue in Democratic contest
By Dan Balz, Washington Post, October 25, 2007

Edwards, who, like Clinton, supported the 2002 Iraq war resolution, said she failed to learn a lesson from that episode. “I think it’s an enormous mistake to give George Bush the first step in the authority to move militarily on Iran,” Edwards said in a telephone interview from Iowa yesterday. “My view is that the resolution on the Iranian Revolutionary Guard did that.”

Biden, in a session with Washington Post editors and reporters yesterday, said labeling the IRGC as a terrorist group was a “serious, serious mistake” because it could force the United States to back up the designation with action. “Big nations can’t bluff,” he said.

Clinton has been steadfast in her contention that the amendment to the defense authorization bill was not a vote for war but, instead, a call for robust diplomatic action to deal with Iran. “I oppose any rush to war but also believe doing nothing is not acceptable — diplomacy is the right path,” she said in her campaign mailer. [complete article]

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NEWS: Neocons angling for a return

Mideast hawks help to develop Giuliani policy
By Michael Cooper and Marc Santora, New York Times, October 25, 2007

Rudolph W. Giuliani’s approach to foreign policy shares with other Republican presidential candidates an aggressive posture toward terrorism, a commitment to strengthening the military and disdain for the United Nations.

But in developing his views, Mr. Giuliani is consulting with, among others, a particularly hawkish group of advisers and neoconservative thinkers.

Their positions have been criticized by Democrats as irresponsible and applauded by some conservatives as appropriately tough, while raising questions about how closely aligned Mr. Giuliani’s thinking is with theirs.

Mr. Giuliani’s team includes Norman Podhoretz, a prominent neoconservative who advocates bombing Iran “as soon as it is logistically possible”; Daniel Pipes, the director of the Middle East Forum, who has called for profiling Muslims at airports and scrutinizing American Muslims in law enforcement, the military and the diplomatic corps; and Michael Rubin, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute who has written in favor of revoking the United States’ ban on assassination. [complete article]

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NEWS, OPINION & EDITOR’S COMMENT: The secret that can’t be told

The right confronts Rice over North Korea policy
By Mark Mazzetti and William J. Broad, New York Times, October 25, 2007

A fight has erupted between conservatives on national security and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice over the Bush administration’s pursuit of diplomacy with North Korea in the face of intelligence that North Korea might have helped Syria begin construction on a nuclear reactor.

The debate moved to Capitol Hill on Wednesday, when Ms. Rice had a tense private meeting with Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of Florida, the senior Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee. Just days earlier, Ms. Ros-Lehtinen was the co-author of an opinion article questioning the White House approach, which offers incentives to North Korea to dismantle its nuclear program.

That article also criticized the Bush administration for what it called the “veil of secrecy” surrounding intelligence that led to an Israeli airstrike in Syria last month on the suspected reactor site, and for the fact that only a handful of lawmakers have been briefed on the subject. [complete article]

What happened in Syria?
By Peter Hoekstra and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, Wall Street Journal, October 20, 2007

We are concerned that, although the Bush administration refuses to discuss the Israeli airstrike with the American people or with the majority of Congress, it has not hesitated to give information on background to the press to shape this story to its liking. New York Times writer David Sanger authored and coauthored articles on Oct. 14 and 15 that appeared to reflect extensive input from senior policy makers. Washington Post writer Glenn Kessler coauthored an article on Sept. 21 that also cited inside information from the administration. We believe this is unacceptable. [complete article]

Editor’s Comment — And where exactly in the contract of employment for journalists at the New York Times and the Washington Post does it say that reporters are meant to help the White House shape a story to its liking? Is that under the “business as usual” clause?

Hoekstra and Ros-Lehtinen do of course have their own ax to grind here, but if two Republican members of the secret circle say that the secret should be let out, what are we waiting for? And while these members of Congress are pressing the White House, why not the Israeli government too? It was an Israeli air strike after all.

And then there’re a few more details about the evidence. Why is the building next to the Euphrates being referred to as a “pumping station” rather than as “a building that might be a pumping station”? The photo in the Times doesn’t appear to show evidence of pipelines running between the purported pumping station and the building purported to house a future reactor. Moreover, no one spells out the necessity of having a water pumping station nearby what is claimed to be a gas-cooled reactor. But then again, all of these are questions that should be addressed by the IAEA and not half-assed journalists, unaccountable government officials, uninformed politicians, and blogging dilettantes.

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NEWS: Turkish incursion into Iraq

Turkish planes bomb Iraq village
By David Clarke and Thomas Grove, Reuters, October 25, 2007

Turkish warplanes attacked a village in northern Iraq on Wednesday, an Iraqi Kurdish security official said, but Turkey said it wanted to hold back from a major incursion to give diplomacy a chance.

The Iraqi official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said a Kurdish village in mountainous country near Shiranish Islam, 25 km (15 miles) northeast of the northern town of Dahuk, had been heavily bombed at midday. He gave no details of damage.

The Turkish government is under great domestic pressure to strike separatist PKK (Kurdistan Workers Party) guerrillas in northern Iraq who killed 12 Turkish soldiers on Sunday as part of an intensified campaign against government troops.

Washington and Baghdad fear a major Turkish incursion into northern Iraq could destabilise the whole region.

Turkish security sources said earlier that Turkish warplanes had flown a series of sorties 20 km (12 miles) into Iraq in the past three days, while some 300 troops had advanced about 10 km (6 miles) into northern Iraq. [complete article]

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NEWS: Torture and forced confessions

Second court ruling redacts information about interrogation
By Dan Eggen, Washington Post, October 25, 2007

The FBI interviewer allegedly gave Abdallah Higazy a choice: Admit to having a special pilot’s radio in a hotel room near the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001, or the security service in his native Egypt would give his family “hell.” Higazy responded by confessing to a crime he didn’t commit.

“I knew I couldn’t prove my innocence, and I knew my family was in danger,” Higazy said later. “. . . If I say this device is mine, I’m screwed and my family is going to be safe. If I say this device is not mine, I’m screwed and my family’s in danger. And Agent [Michael] Templeton made it quite clear that ‘cooperate’ had to mean saying something else other than this device is not mine.”

The new details about the FBI’s allegedly aggressive tactics in the Higazy case were included in a ruling briefly issued last week by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit [PDF], which reinstated a civil lawsuit brought by Higazy against the FBI and Templeton. In an unusual move, however, the appeals court withdrew the first opinion within minutes on Thursday and issued a second opinion Friday, with the details of Higazy’s allegations removed.

“This opinion has been redacted because portions of the record are under seal,” the new ruling reads. “For the purposes of the summary judgment motion, Templeton did not contest that Higazy’s statements were coerced.” Such redactions are imperfect in the Web age, and the original document remains accessible through links on sites and blogs devoted to appellate-court and legal issues.

Higazy was jailed for a month as a suspected accomplice to the World Trade Center attack, until a pilot showed up and asked for his radio back. The fresh details about his interrogation in December 2001 illustrate how an innocent man can be persuaded to confess to a crime that he did not commit, and the lengths to which the FBI was willing to go in its terrorism-related investigations after the Sept. 11 attacks. [complete article]

Editor’s Comment — As this report says, the ruling was briefly issued, but much as the US government might wish otherwise, once something goes out onto the Web, it’s too late to redact the embarrasing details. They can all be read here: Higazy v. Millenium Hotel [PDF]

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NEWS: The terrorists under the bed

Terror watch list swells to more than 755,000
By Mimi Hall, USA Today, October 24, 2007

The government’s terrorist watch list has swelled to more than 755,000 names, according to a new government report that has raised worries about the list’s effectiveness.

The size of the list, typically used to check people entering the country through land border crossings, airports and sea ports, has been growing by 200,000 names a year since 2004. Some lawmakers, security experts and civil rights advocates warn that it will become useless if it includes too many people.

“It undermines the authority of the list,” says Lisa Graves of the Center for National Security Studies. “There’s just no rational, reasonable estimate that there’s anywhere close to that many suspected terrorists.”

The exact number of people on the list, compiled after 9/11 to help government agents keep terrorists out of the country, is unclear, according to the report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO). Some people may be on the list more than once because they are listed under multiple spellings. [complete article]

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FEATURE: Endgame for Iraqi oil?

The sovereignty showdown in Iraq
By Jack Miles, TomDispatch, October 24, 2007

By December 31, 2008, according to Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari, the government of Iraq intends to have replaced the existing mandate for a multinational security force with a conventional bilateral security agreement with the United States, an agreement of the sort that Washington has with Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and several other countries in the Middle East. The Security Council has always paired the annual renewal of its mandate for the multinational force with the renewal of a second mandate for the management of Iraqi oil revenues. This happens through the “Development Fund for Iraq,” a kind of escrow account set up by the occupying powers after the overthrow of the Saddam Hussein regime and recognized in 2003 by U.N. Security Council Resolution 1483. The oil game will be up if and when Iraq announces that this mandate, too, will be terminated at a date certain in favor of resource-development agreements that — like the envisioned security agreement — match those of other states in the region.

The game will be up because, as Antonia Juhasz pointed out last March in a New York Times op-ed, “Whose Oil Is It, Anyway?”:

“Iraq’s neighbors Iran, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia…. have outlawed foreign control over oil development. They all hire international oil companies as contractors to provide specific services as needed, for a limited duration, and without giving the foreign company any direct interest in the oil produced.”

By contrast, the oil legislation now pending in the Iraqi parliament awards foreign oil companies coveted, long-term, 20-35 year contracts of just the sort that neighboring oil-producers have rejected for decades. It also places the Iraqi oil industry under the control of an appointed body that would include representatives of international oil companies as full voting members.

The news that the duly elected government of Iraq is exercising its limited sovereignty to set a date for termination of the American occupation radically undercuts all discussion in Congress or by American presidential candidates of how soon the U.S. occupation of Iraq may “safely” end. Yet if, by the same route, Iraq were to resume full and independent control over the world’s third-largest proven oil reserves — 200 to 300 million barrels of light crude worth as much as $30 trillion at today’s prices — a politically incorrect question might break rudely out of the Internet universe and into the mainstream media world, into, that is, the open: Has the Iraq war been an oil war from the outset? [complete article]

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NEWS: The biggest spender since LBJ

Bush is the biggest spender since LBJ
By David Lightman, McClatchy, October 24, 2007

George W. Bush, despite all his recent bravado about being an apostle of small government and budget-slashing, is the biggest spending president since Lyndon B. Johnson. In fact, he’s arguably an even bigger spender than LBJ.

“He’s a big government guy,” said Stephen Slivinski, the director of budget studies at Cato Institute, a libertarian research group.

The numbers are clear, credible and conclusive, added David Keating, the executive director of the Club for Growth, a budget-watchdog group.

“He’s a big spender,” Keating said. “No question about it.”

Take almost any yardstick and Bush generally exceeds the spending of his predecessors. [complete article]

Wars may cost $2.4 trillion over decade
AP, October 24, 2007

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan could cost as much as $2.4 trillion through the next decade, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said Wednesday. The White House brushed off the analysis as “speculation.”

The estimate was the most comprehensive and far-reaching one to date. It factored in costs previously not counted and assumed that large number of forces would remain in the regions.

According to analysis, the U.S. has spent about $604 billion on the wars, including $39 billion in diplomatic operations and foreign aid.

If the U.S. were to reduce the number of troops deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan to 75,000 six years from now, it would cost the U.S. $1 trillion more for military and diplomatic operations and $705 billion in interest payments to pay for the wars through 2017. [complete article]

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OPINION: Pseudo-antiwar Democrats

The trap that is Iraq
By Tom Oliphant, The Guardian, October 24, 2007

Hidden in plain sight is the one issue still capable of blowing up the campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination.

It isn’t Iran, outsider-insider, lobbyist relations or healthcare.

It’s the war in Iraq.

The mass media illusion – and also delusion – is that the Democrats, generally, are “anti-war”, especially in contrast to the Bush/Cheney-tethered Republicans. Vaguely, anti-war is meant to suggest favourable disposition to ending the madness.

But the suggestion is false. The truth that could yet destabilise the race and consign consultant Mark Penn’s inevitability lectures about client Hillary Clinton to the trash can is that the major candidates are not as anti-war as they seem. [complete article]

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NEWS: Sadr says freeze of militia’s military activity remains in force

Iraq’s Al-Sadr says freeze of militia’s military activity remains in force
AP, October 24, 2007

Anti-American Shiite leader Muqtada al-Sadr has urged members of his Mahdi Army to respect his order for a six-month freeze of military activity, threatening offenders in the feared militia with expulsion.

A statement by al-Sadr’s office in the holy city of Najaf south of Baghdad said the cleric’s call on the militiamen to respect the freeze, announced in August, was issued in response to questions from followers about whether the order to stand down still applied.

It was not clear why al-Sadr’s office issued the statement now, but U.S. forces appear to have escalated of their campaign against what the military calls rogue, Iranian-backed Mahdi Army militiamen.

Clashes between suspected Mahdi Army militiamen and rival Shiite groups are on the rise in parts of the mainly Shiite south of Iraq.

Al-Sadr said the freeze remained in force and may be renewed if such a move was found to be beneficial. “Enemy parties are spreading this news (that the freeze ended) to tarnish the image of this heroic ideological army that has shown loyalty to its leadership by implementing the freeze.” He, however, said some did observe the freeze.

“So, we appeal to everyone to obey the order in every respect or risk being expelled from this … army in which there is no place for renegades.” [complete article]

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OPINION: Bush’s special talent for failure

At last, consensus in the Middle East: all agree these talks are bound to fail
By Jonathan Freedland, The Guardian, October 24, 2007

It takes a special kind of genius to unite the warring parties of the Israel-Palestine conflict, but George Bush may just have pulled it off. His proposal for what the US administration calls a “meeting”, rather than a peace conference, in Annapolis, Maryland, before the end of the year has elicited a unanimity unheard of in the Middle East. From the hardmen of Hamas to the hawks of Likud, there is a rare consensus: Annapolis is doomed to failure.

“On the Palestinian street, no one has a good word to say for this exercise,” says the analyst and longtime negotiator Hussein Agha: “At best people are sceptical, at worst they are calling for a boycott.” Two recent opinion polls on either side of the divide show emphatic majorities of both Israelis and Palestinians convinced that success is impossible. That sentiment is shared at the highest level. Yesterday Gordon Brown, at a press conference with the visiting Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert, lowered expectations so far that they were somewhere around his ankles. “We’re not complacent about the outcome,” he said by way of understatement. “We don’t have false hopes.”

Even the US administration cannot muster much faith in its own initiative. In a long and detailed speech on Middle East policy at the weekend, Vice-President Dick Cheney made only one passing reference to Annapolis, in just a single paragraph on the Israel-Palestine conflict. One suspects the Cheney-led hawks within the administration would not be too downhearted if Annapolis fails, thereby reducing the standing of its chief patron, Condoleezza Rice, the US secretary of state, regarded as dangerously soft by the Cheney camp. Ominously, the date for the event is already slipping. Once pencilled in for November 26, it’s now scheduled only for some time “before the end of the year”. [complete article]

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NEWS: Israel expands collective punishment of Gaza

Israel moves to further isolate Gazans
By Joshua Mitnick, Christian Science Monitor, October 25, 2007

Ratcheting up pressure on Palestinians in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip, Israel prepared to cut electricity supplies to Gazans in retaliation for an escalation in cross-border rocket and mortar attacks by Palestinian militants.

After declaring Gaza an “enemy entity” in September, Israel has kept Gaza’s borders sealed save for humanitarian foodstuffs and medicines. The policy has triggered dramatic inflation, shuttered businesses, and spurred demand for black-market goods smuggled through tunnels that were once used by gun runners and drug dealers.

“The market now takes all food that you smuggle, also spare parts and medication,” says Hashem, a tunnel-owner from the border town of Rafah who spoke on the condition that his last name not be used.

Analysts say the goal of Israel’s policy of isolating Gaza seems to be to pressure Gazans to turn against Hamas, which has led the area since it wrested control from the Palestinian Authority in June. Other observers warn that the pressure is likely to backfire, creating more volunteers for militant groups and stirring sympathy for Hamas. [complete article]

An economic tailspin in Gaza
By Dion Nissenbaum, Checkpoint Jerusalem, October 24, 2007

Life in Gaza has entered a state of suspended animation.

The usually busy streets are free of traffic. Stores and factories are closed. Unemployment is on the rise as tens of thousands of people have lost their jobs in the last four months.

Israel stages regular air strikes on suspected militants and keeps warning that it might launch a military invasion if the daily rocket and mortar attacks continue.

And residents say they are waiting for the other shoe to drop. [complete article]

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NEWS: Waxman’s on the job

White House feels Waxman’s oversight gaze
By Jonathan Weisman, Washington Post, October 25, 2007

For months, Rep. Henry A. Waxman, chairman of the House oversight committee, has been threatening, subpoenaing and just plain badgering Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to come before his panel to answer questions about the run-up to the Iraq war, corruption and State Department contracting.

Today, Rice will finally appear. But Waxman (D-Calif.) has not spent the week on a victory lap. He has found time to produce evidence accusing State Department security contractor Blackwater Worldwide of tax evasion, to fire off a letter to Rice demanding information about alleged mismanagement of a $1 billion contract to train Iraqi police, and to hold a hearing on uranium poisoning on Navajo land.

Waxman has become the Bush administration’s worst nightmare: a Democrat in the majority with subpoena power and the inclination to overturn rocks. But in Waxman the White House also faces an indefatigable capital veteran — with a staff renowned for its depth and experience — who has been waiting for this for 14 years. [complete article]

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NEWS: Blackwater fallout

State Dept. ousts its chief of security
By Karen DeYoung, Washington Post, October 25, 2007

The State Department’s security chief was forced to resign yesterday after a critical review found that his office had failed to adequately supervise private contractors protecting U.S. diplomats in Iraq.

Richard J. Griffin, a former Secret Service agent who was once in charge of presidential protection, was told by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s deputy, John D. Negroponte, to leave office by Nov. 1. Griffin’s chief deputy, Gregory B. Starr, will become acting assistant secretary for diplomatic security.

Griffin is the first senior official to lose his job over the widening private-contractor scandal. Under fire from Congress, the U.S. military and the Iraqi government after the Sept. 16 contractor killing of 17 Iraqi civilians, Rice on Tuesday ordered extensive changes in diplomatic security arrangements in Iraq and pledged stronger oversight. A high-level panel she appointed to review the Iraq operation recommended Griffin’s departure along with the other changes, according to State Department sources. [complete article]

Under siege, Blackwater takes on air of bunker
By Paul von Zielbauer and James Glanz, New York Times, October 25, 2007

The Blackwater USA compound here is a fortress within a fortress. Surrounded by a 25-foot-high wall of concrete topped by a chain-link fence and razor wire, the compound sits deep inside the heavily defended Green Zone, its two points of entry guarded by Colombian Army veterans carrying shotguns and automatic rifles.

In the mazelike interior, Blackwater employees live in trailers stacked one on top of the other in surroundings that one employee likens to a “minimum-security prison.”

Since Sept. 16, when Blackwater guards opened fire in a crowded Baghdad square, the compound has begun to feel more like a prison, too. On that day, employees of Blackwater, a private security firm hired to protect American diplomats, responded to what they called a threat and killed as many as 17 people and wounded 24. [complete article]

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